Video: A (really) big day out in Colorado

Zack Vestal tackles a 236 mile loop of the Colorado Rockies + Mike Cotty goes long in the Alps and across Southern England

Zack Vestal big ride

Seeing how far you can ride in a day is a surefire way to explore your personal limits as a cyclist. It's even more of a test, and more of an achievement if your big ride is through big country, as this film from Mavic demonstrates.

The film folows the company's communications manasger in the US, Zack Vestal as he takes on a chunk of the Colorado Rockies in one day.

At the age of 18, Vestal had pushed himself to his limits on a one-day ride; now, two decades on and at 38 more than twice that age, he wondered whether he could ride double the distance – a loop of 236 miles (380 kilometres) – in a single day.

Choosing one of the year’s longest days to undertake his ride and thereby maximise the daylight available to him, his route included the Independence Pass, which sits on the Continental Divide at 3,687 metres above sea level.

This short film from Mavic, together with a monologue from Vestal - who is the company's communications manager in the U - follows his journey.

Vestal's ride put us in mind of three of our favourite ride videos from last year in which Mike Cotty, a man with a formidable reputation as an endurance rider - who also has linked to Mavic - embarked on an even longer ride for a two-part video shot for the French company.

On 5 and 6 August Cotty set out to ride 677km non-stop across the Alps from Évian-les-Bains to Nice.

His route took him over 17 mountain passes including Europe's seventh highest road pass, the Col de la Bonette, which has an elevation of 2,715 metres - the Cime de la Bonette loop close to the pass itself goes up to 2,802 metres, making it the highest paved road in Europe.

In all, the route required Cotty to tackle more than 16,000 metres of climbing.

You can see how he got on in the two videos below.

As part of his training Cotty put in a monster 300 mile day ride across Southern England from Herne Bay in Kent to Cotty HQ in Southampton. Naturally he filmed that too. Enjoy.

Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.

Wow I'm so jealous of this bloke and the pure fact he's got time to do this, something he clearly enjoys and is passionate about. If life was like this for all of us wouldn't it be a pleasure.
Right all I need to do now is get the wife to work a bit harder and keep me in the life style I would like!

I think the real beauty behind these rides is the fact that they make the time to do it. Like most of us Zack and Mike work full time intense jobs and, as with most of the inspiring adventurers around us, the time to do it is squeezed in between work, family and the rest that life throws at us. Getting up in the dark and drilling every spare minute and they do it simply because it's in them, it's who they are and they want it bad enough.